1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device for use with boats of various sizes, such as may be launched and raised to and from the water surfaces periodically for various reasons. During such launching and raising periods bailing out of bilge water collected in the boat by some suitable means is necessary. The bilge water is discharged from a bail hole usually in the boat transom, said hole being required to be closed with a proper size bail plug when launched into the water. The novel bail plug of this invention is automatically projected into the boat transom bail hole in response to buoyant forces accompanying launching of the boat into the water.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Heretofore, there have been various arrangements of bailer plugs used to plug the transom bail hole, such as rubber stoppers, screw plugs or the like. Usually such plugs are not attached to the boat in any way. As a result, in many instances the plugs are lost or misplaced unless they are attached to the boat in some manner. Accordingly, when the boater goes to launch his craft, he must locate a bail plug to manually seal the bail hole before he can launch the same into the water.
Typical of some other prior art boat bailer plugs, which are attached to the hull of a boat, are U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,730,062 to Mitchell and 3,004,511 to Moeller, which show manually opened bail plugs and spring-biased bail plugs to close the bail holes upon manual release.
Examples of other prior art bailer plugs are illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,394,671 to Mayer which discloses an automatic bailer plug including a ball float member 71 mounted in a shroad 69 adjacent the bail hole. The ball 71 in the Mayer device is water actuated under some conditions to close the bail hole.
Other U.S. Patents which show the general state of the art of bailer plugs mounted in boats are as follows:
______________________________________ 3,400,683 DeForest 9/10/68 3,757,726 Moeller 9/11/73 4,075,965 Lasch 2/28/78 ______________________________________
None of the aforementioned prior art bailer plug arrangements disclose an assembly which is automatically actuated to close a bail hole in a boat transom in direct response to the launching of the boat into the water. Accordingly, in the prior art devices there is a danger that the boats associated with those devices will take on water as launching into the water occurs.